Look, Miranda, he said, those twenty long years that lie be… - John Fowles

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Look, Miranda, he said, those twenty long years that lie between you and me. I've more knowledge of life than you, I've lived more and betrayed more and seen more betrayed. At your age one is bursting with ideals. You think that because I can sometimes see what's trivial and what's important in art that I ought to be more virtuous. But I don't want to be virtuous. My charm (if there is any) for you is simply frankness. And experience. Not goodness. I'm not a good man. Perhaps morally I'm younger even than you are. Can you understand that?

John Fowles

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bursting frankness younger experience frank young life goodness understand older virtue charm trivial betray virtuous good art betrayal years betrayed old ideal important ideals knowledge

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About John Fowles

John Robert Fowles (31 March 1926 – 5 November 2005) was an English novelist and essayist.

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Alternative Names: John Robert Fowles

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Margaret Atwood Jean-Paul Sartre Iris Murdoch Saul Bellow Ursula K. Le Guin

Additional quotes by John Fowles

It's despair at the lack of feeling, of love, of reason in the world. It's despair that anyone can even contemplate the idea of dropping a bomb or ordering that it should be dropped. It's despair that so few of us care. It's despair that there's so much brutality and callousness in the world. It's despair that perfectly normal young men can be made vicious and evil because they've won a lot of money. And then do what you've done to me.

The mess of my life, the selfishnesses and false turnings and the treacheries, all these things could fall into place, they could become a source of construction rather than a source of chaos, and precisely because I had no other choice.

Forgetting’s not something you do, it happens to you. Only it didn’t happen to me.

Look, Miranda, he said, those twenty long years that lie between you and me. I've more knowledge of life than you, I've lived more and betrayed more … - John Fowles

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